If you follow this blog regularly, there's a pattern emerging lately as I've used quite a few Infographics. The reasoning behind this is simple - I'm a visual person and find a graphical representation of information something I can get my mind around quickly... Actually, this could be an excuse to write less...mmm?

Anyway, when we want to find or research something we'll most often start with a search engine, which basically means Google for us UK users. But have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes to supply your results within milliseconds of clicking the search button?

It's pretty amazing stuff, so without further ado...drumroll please... here's todays infographic I found on Visual.ly

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Last Thursday Google announced a change to Google Places Pages, which gives me yet another chance to carry on like a broken record, urging you to claim your Google Places Page, today.

Unless you've been on a three month tour of the interior of the Soviet Union, you've probably seen and heard about all the re-branding, re-grouping and re-sculpting Google have been doing lately, and Google Places is the latest to come under the knife.

Gone is the cluttered interface and in it's place is a clean and simple look and feel. And you get an idea of what they're trying to achieve with the addition of not one, but two big red, prominent review buttons.

Right now, you may have a page on Google you don't know about and people may already be leaving reviews. Go and check it out. Just go to Google and type in your business name and location and see what comes up.

Recently, I was in a meeting discussing the pros and cons of Search Engine Optimisation. The company had a web site but paid very little attention to it as it had 'never worked'.

While both the owners grasped the need for a new design, I found it difficult to explain the need to make sure the re-design was search engine friendly and well worth the extra investment. They couldn't understand you didn't need to pay Google to have page 1 rankings, and you just needed to make sure each page was of a high enough quality for Google to place it in the first few results.

You know, as soon as I mentioned title tags, keyword research and quality content I could see them both about to nod off, so I got online and did a quick hunt to see if I could find a video on YouTube which made my monologue a little less, well, Boring.

This video was the answer and I've got to thank Matt Cutts from Google...Although the new barage of questions from these two directors was a little disconcerting:)

Although the video is about how Google finds stuff, Matt really gives away some important tips for you to use immediatley.

Pay really close attention after 1 minute 15 seconds as you get to hear about some of the more important items to focus on when you're getting your pages ready to be indexed by Google.

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